What did you obtain from chess in life and reality?

OK one more thing that is more recent...
I am an avid whitewater kayaker in my mid 60's. On steep creeks stuff just comes at you FAST.
I've noticed that my mental processing speed was slowing down and steeps that used to be fun now feel like survival kayaking. But! since returning to chess last year and playing some blitz here and elsewhere my mental processing&decision making speed has increased again. Stuff that had started to seem too fast&dangerous is now slowing down. So I can kayak more years and get injured fewer times.

I like capturing Black's

Don't let tasks pile up. Pieces under threat, etc should be dealt with as soon as possible

Lesson chess has taught me: Capture all your problems En Passant.

Working memory and managing routines.

"With tactics, you can win the battle but not the war". Apply chess to life and you will see that without setting goals, hard work, focus and empathy you are just a pawn of somebody else game. Easy to sacrifice and with no clue ...

I learnt that I was bad at losing. It didn't teach me how to lose though, I learnt that somewhere else, basically improving awareness with meditation and some eastern philosophy, but chess showed me I had a problem and chess gave me a way to practice losing.

Most likely I would not even have been born without chess. Why so? In WW2 my father was radio operator and gunner in the stukas. Probably the most dangerous place in the entire Wehrmacht, because facing backwards he was on the wrong side of the steel plate which protected the pilot. My father was slightly wounded, was taken to hospital, as a good chessplayer he made friends with the chief doctor, who kept my father in hospital for nearly one year and then declared him unfit for flying. so he survived and could make me

Chess addiction is no different than porn and alcohol addiction.
Destroys social, family and career life.